Agri-Pulse
Push is on for more farm aid, even before $12B goes out
By Oliver Ward and Lydia Johnson
Republican farm-state senators say row crop growers are likely to need additional aid beyond the Trump administration's newly announced $12 billion "bridge" payment program, and specialty crop producers say the package shortchanges them.
While "$12 billion is a lot of money for anybody," Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., told Agri-Pulse that "in the absence of the ability to export what we produce, particularly when we, in many instances, have bumper crops,” Congress “very well may need to” issue more.
“The need is evident,” Moran said.
Other GOP senators indicated that they would be in favor of Congress taking steps to augment the administration’s Farmer Bridge Assistance (FBA) program.
Growers of U.S. row crops, which stand to receive some $11 billion of the $12 billion in assistance unveiled Monday, are facing “serious” economic hardship, Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., said.
“We're hoping that we can come up with something. Not sure what it will be yet, but I will certainly support it,” she told Agri-Pulse.
Montana Sen. Steve Daines said the $12 billion assistance package is “a good start.”
The $12 billion assistance package brings the total amount of ad hoc support set aside for farmers since January 2025 to $42 billion, according to an American Farm Bureau Federation analysis. Only the Supplemental Disaster Relief program was larger, at $16.1 billion.
Specialty crop producers are already worried that the $1 billion allocated to them won’t go far enough and that Congress will need to provide supplementary assistance. Kam Quarles, CEO at the National Potato Council, told Agri-Pulse he expects producers of around 300 different crops will soon be jockeying for a piece of the $1 billion.
The $1 billion set aside falls short of recent efforts to help specialty crop producers, he said. A program created by the Biden administration last year – called the Marketing Assistance for Specialty Crops program – had more than $2 billion to distribute.
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“In the interim, this crisis has gotten much worse,” Quarles said. “The $1 billion doesn't even get you to what happened in the summertime. It doesn't even get you halfway there,” he added. “That's why we believe Congress is going to have to get involved to provide additional resources.”
Like the Trump administration's new program, MASC was funded through USDA's Commodity Credit Corporation.
American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall told Agri-Pulse during a visit to California on Monday that $1 billion for specialty crop producers seems "a little short."
Specialty crop producers were also disappointed that they weren't included in the initial FBA rollout on Monday and would have to wait longer for their share of the $1 billion, according to a statement from the Specialty Crop Farm Bill Alliance, which counts the International Fresh Produce Association and Western Growers among its members.
"The Farmer Bridge Assistance Program provides some initial relief, but is insufficient on its own. It effectively excludes most specialty crop growers and does little to prevent the loss of farms or farmland due to acute financial hardship," Mike Lavender, policy director of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, said in a statement. "Congress must act quickly to keep farmers on the land." NSAC represents smaller scale operations, many of which produce fruits and vegetables.
Capitol Hill conversations
Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., who chairs the Senate Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, said in October that standing up further additional assistance to farmers would involve multiple legislative vehicles and steps. And discussions are continuing on Capitol Hill around what to do next.
While Senate Agriculture Committee Chair John Boozman, R-Ark., and Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., were at the White House on Monday waiting to participate in the administration’s event to unveil the new assistance, the pair discussed the potential for further aid, according to Fischer.
In his comments during that event, Boozman left the door open for Congress doing more, but suggested that the administration would have the ultimate say.
“We look forward to helping you, if we need some additional help,” Boozman told President Donald Trump. “Congress will be there,” he assured the president, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and other senior officials.
Hoeven told Agri-Pulse after the event that he had already spoken to Trump and Rollins about the possibility of additional aid.
“That's an ongoing evaluation,” he said, but stressed that “they’re both very committed to figuring out what we need to do and working through it methodically.”
Hoeven didn’t rule out using a January spending bill as a vehicle for moving additional assistance, if needed.
“We have to kind of evaluate each step as we go,” he said.
Hoeven added that he still sees loosening the restrictions on how tariff revenue can be spent through an account known as Section 32 as the best vehicle for releasing any additional funding for farm aid.
During the Monday announcement at the White House, Trump again indicated that the administration is using tariff revenues to fund the latest aid package. In fact, the FBA program funding is coming from the CCC, the same spending authority the president tapped to fund the Market Facilitation Program during his first term. The CCC is akin to a line of credit that is regularly replenished through the annual appropriations process.
ECAP 2.0?
In a weekly call with reporters on Tuesday, Iowa GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley said he was doubtful that Congress would have a clear idea of whether additional assistance would be needed before the FBA payments go out in February.
But analysts are already crunching the numbers and estimating payment levels for U.S. commodities.
Paul Neiffer, an accountant and agribusiness adviser who publishes the Farm CPA Report newsletter, says in an analysis of the FBA program that USDA’s calculations seem to be similar to those used for the Emergency Commodity Assistance Program, which authorized $10 billion in payments earlier this year. With the extra $1 billion in funding earmarked for FBA, Neiffer reasons that FBA payments could be around 10% higher than ECAP payments, before taking into account price changes.
“The only difference between ECAP and FBA is the estimated [market year average] price,” Neiffer writes.
The final payments will depend on what benchmark USDA uses to assess prices, Neiffer says. But based on November’s prices, Neiffer estimates corn and soybeans could see payments of around $48 and $32 per acre, respectively. That would constitute a more than $5 increase per acre from the ECAP payments for corn and a $2 increase for soybeans.
Rice and wheat, which have seen the largest price drops in 2025, will likely see the largest increase in their payments from ECAP under FBA, Neiffer said. Under his projections, rice producers are set to receive more than $102 per acre, up from around $77 under ECAP, while wheat producers would get $37 per acre, after receiving $31 under ECAP.